In the past few days, there have been at least 162 Islamophobic hate attacks in the UK, and nine mosques have been targeted with knives„ petrol bombs and graffiti. That’s a 900% increase, according to the tracking group Tell Mama UK. Petrol-bomb attacks on mosques are not reported as terrorism, and nor are individual acts of anti-Muslim violence; we are expected to understand this quasi-organised campaign of fear as something else, as a ‘backlash’.
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In these Sour Times: Islamophobia and the Woolwich aftermath (via foucaultthehaters)
Whatever ‘terrorism’ is, it’s up to the state to define. It’s up to the government to define whose brutality is tolerable, and it’s up to the press to define whose ‘extremism’ is a threat to national identity, “an attack on everyone in Britain” (thanks Theresa May) and whose merely an overzealous expression of public sentiment. Two weeks ago a Muslim man was murdered in Birmingham by two white men with machetes, in an act of brutal, bigoted extremism that mirrored what happened in Woolwich, but that wasn’t deemed ‘terrorism’ - it was hardly even news
(via fariyah)
